The fires that burned
in Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) earlier this week
mostly died down on Thursday, but the protests on the streets of Ukraine
continue to roil the Eastern European country. Since November, the
crisis has continued to grow to the point where experts are openly
worrying about the potential risk of civil war in a state that lies
between the European Union on on side and Russia on the other. Here’s
what you need to know about the current situation and its implications:

How it all began

The protests began on November 22, after President Viktor Yanukovych
reversed course and refused to sign political and trade agreements with
the European Union that had been in the works for years after heavy
pressure from Moscow to abandon the agreements. Despite a violent police
crackdown, protesters vowed to continue blockading streets and
occupying public buildings until their central demand is met: the
current government, including Yanukovych, must go.

We don’t need the EU’s money. We need the EU’s values.”

The treaties would have opened the European Union market to Ukrainian companies and could have boosted the Ukrainian GDP by more than six percent over ten years.
The country is suffering through an economic depression and lower
tariffs and expanded competition could have also lowered prices,
“fueling an increase of household consumption of some 12 percent.”
Ukraine would have also adopted 350 EU laws, codifying what many
Ukrainians saw as a “commitment to European standards of governance and
social justice.” To them, the treaty was a way of diminishing Russia’s
long-time influence and reversing the trend of persistent economic
corruption and sluggishness.

“We don’t need the EU’s money. We need the EU’s values,” one protester told TIME.
Ukrainians have long viewed the West through rose-colored glasses and
now see Russia as a “corrupt, inefficient, oligarch-driven regime” that
can garner influence by flouting its “oil, gas and natural resources,”
Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the journal Russia in Global Affairs said.

Yanukovych explained his last-minute change of heart by claiming that
“EU’s aid offers were insufficient and that Ukraine cannot afford to
lose close trade ties with Russia.” Russia — which is trying to
construct a Eurasian Union of former Soviet republics — began derailing
the deal in August, when it imposed painful trade sanctions
against Ukraine and threatened the country with “gas bills.” “I have
been one-on-one with Russia for three and a half years under very
unequal conditions,” Yanukovych complained to German Chancellor Angela
Merkel.

The crackdown

Protesters clash with police at Presidential office in Kiev, on Sunday.

CREDIT: ASSOCIATED PRESS

Only days into the protests, Ukrainian police brutally cleared Kyiv’s
Maidan Nezalezhnosti, where protesters had been peacefully assembled.
Videos of police beating protesters
went viral and heightened the outrage. The next day, protesters defied a
court order and returned in even greater numbers — with an estimated
350,000 people taking to the streets of Kyiv and more assembling in
cities across the country, even in the historically pro-Russian east.

Protesters vowed to step up their efforts after a failed vote of no confidence in the Ukrainian parliament, continuing to take over public buildings in the nation’s capital, blockading the central bank and the Cabinet Ministry and seizing City Hall. Protesters vowed to occupy Kyiv’s streets and public buildings until their demands are met, despite the onset of deep winter.

Russia steps in

CREDIT: AP Photo/Sergei Grits

Given the debate between whether Ukraine would turn towards the west
or east in its future, it only seemed fitting that Moscow would soon
step in. Russian president Vladimir Putin announced in December that it
was willing to slash the amount Ukraine paid for Russian natural gas, a
huge political win for the embattled Yanukovych. In addition, Russia
would finance a $15 billion no-strings attached loan to help stave off a looming financial crisis. As of February, half of that loan has been dispersed to Kyiv.

These laws were the biggest mistake of Yanukovich this year”

Several weeks later, it seemed like the protests had themselves run
out of gas, though Ukrainians still grumbled that the effects of the
loan were unlikely to trickle down enough to effect their daily lives.
That ennui changed with the hasty passage in mid-January of a slew of
laws designed to further quiet dissent and curtail the freedom of
assembly. It appears that legislation was the spark needed to reignite the Maidan, with protesters returning en mass
calling for Yanukovych to hold early elections. “These laws were a
police club to hold over protesters and neutralize them. All they did
was pour oil on the flames, make the situation sharper and radicalize
the protests. These laws were the biggest mistake of Yanukovich this
year,” Volodymyr Fesenko of the Penta think-tank told Reuters.

It was then that the previously entirely peaceful protests began their descent into
violence. Makeshift slingshots launched Molotov cocktails against
policemen’s shields and government orders overturned previous bans
preventing the use of water cannons in Kyiv’s freezing temperatures as
tires burned on the streets. Groups of protesters began assaulting and
arresting those who they believed to be members of “titushki,”
unofficial gangs of pro-government civilians, placing them before
civilian trials. At least one protester accused the police of torturing him after his arrest.

Kyiv explodes

CREDIT: YouTube

For a brief time, though, it appeared as though the government and
opposition would actually be able to strike a deal. The anti-protest
laws were repealed
in late January; Prime Minister Mykola Azarov stepped down; Kyiv’s
mayor was fired for allegedly ordering the initial crackdown.
Demonstrators had earlier this week abandoned their posts
in Kyiv’s City Hall — which they had occupied for nearly three months —
as part of the deal struck with the government to provide amnesty to
those who had taken part in the protests and the revocation of the
anti-protest laws.

Days later, however, the scene stands as it is currently unfolding,
with hundreds of riot police still circling the square with water
cannons periodically returning to blast at the barricades. The most
awe-inspiring images of the crisis appeared in the midst of this
fighting, as demonstrators launched Molotov cocktails at the police
formations and shone bright lasers at the guardsmen’s faces in an
attempt to blind them as the fire designed to separate them from the
police burned high. The Ukrainian government early Tuesday evening
confirmed that at least seven protesters and two police officers died in
the first wave of fighting. That number continued to grow until the
first day’s casualty count had reached at least 25 dead and hundreds injured.

A truce announced on Wednesday night had already been shattered on Thursday morning, as the death toll sharply rose to at least 50
over the course of the crisis, with opposition medics saying that
number was actually at least 100. A new disturbing development came in
the form of video that the demonstrators claimed shows snipers firing into their midst, resulting in reports of civilians with gunshot wounds to the neck, brain, and heart. A hotel near the square has become a makeshift trauma hospital,
as opposition medics race to save the lives of people injured in the
clashes. In response to the escalation, Kyiv mayor Volodymyr Makeyenko resigned from Yanukoyvch’s ruling Party of Regions in protest.

Furthering the chance of greater bloodshed, the Ukrainian Ministry of the Interior said that 67 of its police officers had been taken captive by protesters, and have authorized the issuance of service firearms to the riot police and orders to fire live ammunition
in their own defense. “We are outraged by the images of Ukrainian
security forces firing automatic weapons on their own people,” White
House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in a statement on Thursday about
the reports.

Opposition leader and world heavyweight boxing champion Vitaliy
Klitschko meanwhile on Thursday reiterated the opposition’s primary
demand in a video statement,
namely that Yanukovych must call early elections, while urging his
fellow countrymen to not allow excessive violence in the street.

Making matters all the more tense, Yanukovych now appears to be
losing his grip on the west of his country, which is historically far
less pro-Russia than the east. “Raising the prospect of Ukraine
splitting along a historic cultural and linguistic faultline, the
regional assembly in Lviv, a bastion of Ukrainian nationalism near the
Polish border, issued a statement condemning President Viktor
Yanukovich’s government for its ‘open warfare’ on demonstrators in Kiev
and saying it took executive power locally for itself,” Reuters report on Wednesday. And in the eastern province of Crimea, pro-Russian separatism is on the rise, Radio Free Europe report on Thursday, fanning fears of a possible civil war situation.

The world responds

An anti-government protester holds a firearm as he mans a barricade in Kyiv

CREDIT: AP Photo/ Marko Drobnjakovic

“The United States condemns in the strongest terms the violence
that’s taking place,” President Obama said on Wednesday, soon after
landing for a summit in Mexico. “And we have been deeply engaged with
our European partners as well as the Ukrainian government and the
opposition to try to ensure that that violence ends. But we hold the
Ukrainian government primarily responsible for making sure that it is
dealing with peaceful protestors in an appropriate way, that the
Ukrainian people are able to assemble and speak freely about their
interests without fear of repression.”

Obama also emphasized that the U.S. expects the “Ukrainian government
to show restraint, to not resort to violence in dealing with peaceful
protestors.” He also urged the protesters to remain peaceful as well,
warning “that with our European partners and the international community
there will be consequences if people step over the line.”

The European Union on Thursday approved targeted sanctions
on Ukrainian government officials, as well as an arms embargo on the
country. The U.S. also announced on Wednesday evening that it was imposing a visa ban
on 20 Ukrainian officials as part of their initial response to recent
escalations. Experts, however, say that the announced embargos are unlikely to do much
to change Yanukovych’s calculations. This is particularly true of the
arms ban, since as Ukraine was a primary hub for manufacturing weapons
during the Soviet Era they are awash in weapons.

Russia has for its part called the West’s threats of sanctions
“blackmail.” A statement from Russia’s foreign ministry on Wednesday
demanded Ukrainian opposition leaders “stop the bloodshed” and said
Russia would use “all our influence” to bring peace to Ukraine,
according to Sky News. Russia has also described
the demonstrators as launching an “attempted coup d’etat,” language
that Ukrainian government officials have been echoed in calling the
operation to clear out the Maidan and suppress the protests an
“anti-terrorist operation.”

Why it matters

Analysts contend that the protests represent the continued break from
the old Soviet system and signal the countries lurch towards greater
democracy and openness. The demonstrations have also “brought to the
forefront a new generation of protesters
that grew up in an independent Ukraine and have faint — if any —
memories of the Soviet Union. They see themselves as Europeans, they are
disillusioned with politics as usual, and they feel increasingly at
odds with establishment opposition figures.”

“Ukraine is [the] most corrupt country in Europe,” Klitschko told CNN in December. “Ukrainians don’t want to live in [a] police country.”

They’re also deeply frustrated by the state of the economy. The 2008
financial crisis took a particularly heavy toll on Ukraine, which saw
its economy shrink by almost 15 percent in 2009. The declining economy
is compounded by the country’s shrinking reserves of foreign currency and a population in freefall.

In the wake of so much suffering, Ukraine’s citizens are hungry for solutions. As Oleh Kostyuba points out in a New York Timesop-ed,
“polls showed that a strong majority of Ukrainians supported
integration with Europe, even in the East, the region most oriented
toward Russia.” Yanukovych’s sudden reversal added insult to injury for
many Ukrainians. As Greg Satell writes
in Forbes, while the Orange Revolution sent a clear message that
elections could not be stolen, “this time people are taking to the
streets to build a bridge to the future, for the country to adopt
international standards and become, in the words of protesters, ‘a
normal country.’”

And the fate of Ukraine is increasingly being seen as the latest
front in a series of proxy clashes between the United States and Russia
as each seeks to see their vision of Ukraine triumphant. As The New
Republic’s Julia Ioffe pointed out earlier this week, the situation
unfolding in Kyiv and across Ukraine is essentially Putin’s worst nightmare,
the sort of chaos his efforts to suppress dissent in Russia are meant
to prevent. Given the geopolitical stakes at play, it is unlikely that
either side’s supporters turn their attention away from Kyiv’s protests
in the near future.

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